News archive from 20 January 2013

THE dusty compound of the Tigantourine gas facility is a remote, lonely place. Hundreds of miles of empty desert surround the Algerian gas field, stretching as far as the borders of Mali and Nigeria.
For the plant’s 700 staff, a mixture of foreign...

A NEW planet has orbited into the consciousness of Western sky-gazers, reminding them how little they know about the geopolitical solar system on which they are supposed to be experts: its name is Mali.
The Algerian hostage crisis which has affected...

A BULGARIAN politician survived an assassination attempt yesterday, after a gunman jumped on a stage and pointed a gun at his head.
Ahmed Dogan, leader of ­Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish party, was delivering a speech at their annual congress when a man...

Antibiotics have little effect on colds – instead, each dose boosts bacterial resistance. So it's that time of year again. Just about everyone I know has a cough, a cold, a sniffle, a sore throat. We're suffering from a general outbreak of snot, a...

South Sudan and Sudan have failed to reach an agreement on security arrangements and oil exports after several days of talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, officials said yesterday.
The two sides were trying to negotiate the implementation of...

A FEDERAL grand jury has charged Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New Orleans who denounced the US government's response to Hurricane Katrina, with 21 counts of public corruption.
The charges include six counts of bribery, nine counts of wire fraud,...

Ethnic Kachin rebels said clashes in the north continued yesterday despite a government promise to cease fire, casting doubt on hopes that the bloody conflict there could end soon.
The military said on Friday it would stop attacks against rebels...

Authorities have formally notified jailed former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko that she is a suspect in the murder of a businessman and politician in 1996.
The prosecutor-general’s office said on its website that Tymoshenko is suspected of...

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama will take the oath of office today during an inauguration celebration that starts his second term in a more muted tone than his historic swearing-in four years ago.
High unemployment and partisan fights over fiscal policies...

Clergy and congregations from the Diocese of Sheffield will gather in Sheffield next weekend to consider how to fund the ministry in the years to come. The Archdeacon of Sheffield and Rotherham Martyn Snow said: “With financial pressures, we are quite...

AS GREATER clarity and understanding emerges of what, precisely, has occurred at the gas complex at In Amenas, attention will swiftly turn to the political and military ramifications of the attack.
Locally, there will be much attention on how a...

ALGERIA has many of the ingredients that produced uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world - a young population with few job prospects, ruled by an ageing authoritarian leader, and many people who are angry over what they see as corruption and...

Experts have warned against cuts which would reduce the checks and inspections of meat used in food sold in supermarkets. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA The scandal of horsemeat in supermarket burgers should be seen as a warning of things to come, say...